Wednesday, April 06, 2016

Maximum Pond

lol

That was the pond yesterday, after several days of rain. See the wee red plastic marker at the far end, (actually the handle of a little trowel I found buried)? That marks the spot where water can run out to the Council's drain, which is situated under the pile of pebbles you can see there. The iron bar keeps in place a metal grid over the mouth of the drain, so it can't get blocked up. It functions like the overflow in one's bath.

So I've kind of worked out the fill/empty rate now. 2 weeks of drought, 3 for sure, will more or less empty it. 2-3 days of steady rain will fill it again. So, I'm theorising, it'll spend most of the summer emptying and filling, and most of the winter, pretty full.

It's quite impressive to me now, though. How many 100s of gallons of water is it holding now? Several, anyway. All of which would be waterlogging the beds which I'd therefore be unable to dig over and plant out and cultivate. So it's doing its job and it was worth all the hard labour, mud, and cursing of the winter months.

No frogspawn. Yet. But I saw the 1st pond skater, Gerris lacustris, yesterday. The whole surface seemed to be busy with something I couldn't quite see. And bubbles appeared, though I didn't get the impression they were floating up from the depths.